sli / crossfire or single card?

[theone1989]

I haven't had a desktop for a while so excuse me. I came across the term "microstutter" recently but when I googled it there was a lot of old info.

Is microstutter still a problem on the latest cards? ie cards released in mid to late 2010.

Also will be overheating be an issue cos you're putting 2 cards close together? I'd like to try my hand at overclocking everything when I assemble my first rig.

Any other stuff I should watch out for? (i know some games dont' scale well) thanks.

 

[Brackish]

Just go for a single card to start with. The AMD 6900 and the Nvidia 500 Gtx' are all spot on for high res games.

If you do go for dual gpu make sure your case has good airflow, newer cards can run hot but then again my 4870 1gb overclocked can get fairly toasty.

With the micro stuttering I have no idea as I have not had dual gpu's since X1950 pro's which was a few years ago. Search the grpahics card forums for multi gpu setups and see what other users are saying.

If you get a mobo to dual gpu then aim for one with gaps between the PCI-e slots so there is better air flow.

 

[Marine-RX179]

I also think it is a better idea to get the fastest single GPU card you can afford then buying two new slower cards to Crossfire/SLI.

For example in benchmark you might see somelike like a SLI/Crossfire GTX460 1GB/6850 beating a GTX570 in terms of numbers in frame rate result, but in actual gaming environment, dual-GPU set up would generally need at least 10fps higher to deliver the same smoothness as a single GPU card...so what this mean the actual benefit could be minimal, and then there's the issue of not all game scale well with SLI/Crossfire and the dual-GPU set up could perform worse than a single faster card.

I think Crossfire/SLI offer the best value to performance only under the circumstance of getting a single card now, and then pick up another one a year or two later at a much lower price (new or 2nd hand). Paying full price for both cards during its peak price doesn't seem to be too good value.

 

[Scuzzy]

I agree with the 2 above replies, get the best single GPU you can afford now.... Then later on down the line you could double up if you really wanted to!!

 

[MichaelM]

I heard people talking a lot about microstutter with duel GPU cards and SLI/CF. Some people saying they experience it with a certain product and others saying they don't...possibly just some people are more sensitive to FPS rates.

Well my current setup is my first experience with two GPU's and as someone who played counterstrike a lot when I was younger and became very sensitive to how smooth a game is perceived to be I am pretty sure I would notice a "microstutter" or if it does exist then it would be represented in benchmarks but I have no experience of any stutter with CF so far and im willing to say that either the 6900 series solves it or those people had software or hardware issues (bottlenecks).

I won't recommend SLI/CF is you have a motherboard that does not allow spacing between the GPU's, it can work just fine but I don't see the sense in stuffing two high performance cards ontop of each other. Would you stick a single high performance card into a micro atx case with no cable management and the spare cables you didn't use where chucked in there as well? If you have a choice between SLI and CF then you have a choice in smothering two cards together or to allow them to both breathe freely.